Julius Shulman’s photographs of buildings by Charles Eames, Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Pierre Koenig empowered an entire local design movement and allowed all of us an opportunity to see these iconic structures of the 1940's, 50’s and 60’s as the powerful influencers of midcentury modernism that they are. Shulman took these structures and in using his camera, pioneered architectural photography as its own distinctive art form—not simply documentary image capture, but art in of itself.

I had the opportunity to meet Shulman late in his life. Even in his late 90’s his ability to see both the details, and the pannoroma was in focus. His was a talent for visual narrative, showcasing the modern, postwar optimism of the architecture through the eyes of the day. I will treasure the meeting, and my signed copies of Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis and Julius Shulman: Palm Springs of for a lifetime.

And now, another artist is viewing the work of both these iconic architects and the legendary photographer—a second generation print of architecture in watercolor.

New York artist Amy Park debuts her large-scale watercolor paintings based on Shulman’s images at Los Angeles’s Kopeikin Gallery in a show titled “California Experimental Architecture” featuring 20 paintings renvisioning buildings such as John Lautner’s Chemosphere and the famous Eames House in the Pacific Palisades in a new media, giving us an opportunity to see these great designs from a different point of view—just as Shulman gave us an eye into this architecture. Park has taken Shulman’s black-and-white photographs, and introducing colors into the images based on her personal recollection of the buildings.